24 Feb , 2021 By : kanchan Joshi
Ten years ago, a deadly infectious disease killed more than 36,000 Americans. The next year, it killed another 12,000. Over each of the following eight years, the same disease caused between 22,000 and 62,000 deaths.
That disease is influenza — also known as the flu — and it ranks among the 15 leading causes of death in the United States.
Talking about the effects of a typical flu season is somewhat fraught these days. We are living through the worst pandemic in a century, one that is of a different order of magnitude from the flu. In the early months of Covid-19, some people who were trying to deny its severity, including then-President Donald Trump, claimed that it was barely worse the flu. That’s false.
Soon, however, the flu will become a meaningful point of comparison.
In coming months, Covid will probably recede, as a result of vaccinations and growing natural immunity. But it will not disappear.
Covid is caused by a coronavirus — known as SARS-CoV-2 — and coronaviruses often circulate for years, causing respiratory infections and the common cold. The world is not going to extinguish coronaviruses anytime soon, nor will it extinguish this specific one.
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